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Coffee Cake (II)
Mrs. Carson.
One cup molasses, one cup brown sugar, one cup cold coffee, four cups sifted flour, one-half cup butter, two teaspoons baking powder and a small teaspoon allspice.
A plain molasses spice cake with no eggs, leavened only with baking powder and given colour and bitterness by leftover brewed coffee. The original gives no method, pan or oven, so those are the gaps to fill.
- What "coffee cake" means hereThis is a cake made with coffee, not the streusel-topped breakfast cake sold under that name today. The cup of cold coffee is ordinary brewed coffee, presumably cooled leftovers, used as the liquid.
- Method, since none is givenCream the butter with the brown sugar, beat in the molasses, then add the sifted flour, baking powder and allspice alternately with the coffee. Mix only until smooth; this is a batter that toughens with overworking.
- OvenBake at 350F. Molasses and brown sugar both scorch, so a hotter oven will darken the crust well before the centre sets.
- Pan and timeThe volume suits a 9x13 inch pan (about 35-40 minutes) or two 8-inch rounds (about 30 minutes). Test with a skewer in the centre.
- Baking powder and molassesTwo teaspoons of baking powder is modest for four cups of flour. Period baking powders varied in strength, and some contemporary molasses-cake recipes call for a little soda alongside, the molasses being acidic; the cake is dense and close-grained either way.
- MolassesUse unsulphured light or dark molasses, not blackstrap, which is far more bitter than the table molasses of the 1870s and will dominate the allspice.
- ButterHalf a cup is one stick, 4 oz. Nineteenth-century butter was often salted and quite variable; if using unsalted, add half a teaspoon of salt, which the recipe omits entirely.
- YieldRoughly 12 to 16 squares. It keeps well wrapped for several days and improves on the second day as the spice settles.
The Home Cook Book was compiled in Chicago in the 1870s from recipes contributed by named local women and sold for charity, which is why this page carries Mrs. Carson's name rather than an author's. Eggless molasses cakes like this one were kitchen staples in that period: molasses was cheaper than refined sugar, and the whole cake could be assembled from the pantry without breaking into the egg basket. Cakes made without eggs bear some resemblance to the eggless cakes that circulated during the sugar and egg rationing of both world wars, though the connection is a loose one.